The story
The airline was established on 26 May 1989 with the aim of selling medium-haul flights to tour operators. Eurofly started its operations on 26 February 1990. It was set up with a 45% shareholding by Alitalia in response to the needs of the flag carrier to develop the leisure travel market. The original shareholding was divided between Alitalia (45%), Olivetti (45%) and San Paolo Finance (10%).
In 2003, Alitalia sold an 80% stake in the airline for $10.8m to Luxembourg based private equity fund Spinnaker, controlled by Italian bank Banco Profilo.
In January 2004, Eurofly was acquired wholly by the Spinnker fund, managed by Sandro Capotosti (CEO and Founder of Banca Prolilo) and Paolo G. Alberoni. The fund listed Eurofly on the Milan Stock Exchange in December 2005. At the end of 2006, Spinnaker sold the residual 29.95% stake in Eurofly to Meridiana and Mr Giovanni Rossi (CEO of Meridiana) took over as CEO of Eurofly.
In January 2008, two capital increases took place and Meridiana participation in Eurofly's capital grew to 46.1%. On 28 February 2010, Meridiana and Eurofly merged to create Italy's second-biggest airline, Meridiana fly.
From Wikipedia’s article on Eurofly, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3